UPDATE: Busted by the Verge, sorry everybody. Fuck.
*Original Post*
Article: Tesla Allegedly Disables Rapper’s Cybertruck After Song Critique.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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For those who don't know, this shit is protected by the freedom of speech
Not quite, Tesla is not a part of the government.
... yet.
And by the time they are, there will be no such thing as freedom of speech.
Yes, but they can retaliate with petty shit in this way. All freedom of speech means is that there are no criminal charges against him for doing this - the government isn't coming after him.
Yeah, but you could sue for damages and win pretty easy
Easy? Doubtful. They’d have to rule on the validity of the T&Cs first.
and don't forget the huge amount of legal fees to fight it
The Cybertruck owner would certainly have standing to kick off a lawsuit. But yeah, the validity of the contract is in question.
Free speech protects you from the government oppressing your speech, not a private corporation.
The second amendment only protects free speech from government actions.
Free speech is still being suppressed here.
Um...
Just say it.
Yeah, that's literally not how any of this constitutional stuff works.
Free speech is your right to say what you think without the government censoring you. But it has limits and common misunderstandings:
It's not a "free-for-all." You can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater just to cause a panic. You can't tell lies about someone to ruin their reputation (that's called defamation).
It doesn't apply to private companies. Your boss can fire you for saying something they don't like. Twitter (X) can ban you from their platform. A restaurant can kick you out for being rude. These are private entities with their own rules, not the government.
Analogy: The First Amendment means the police can't arrest you for wearing a shirt that says "The Mayor is a cunt." However, your boss at a private company can still fire you for wearing that same shirt to work if they think it's unprofessional.
See shit posts like this are why I'm in favor of dismantling the department of education, if it produces such ignorant outcomes, it creates more harm than good.
At least if you were an uneducated hick from some Boondock wastewater town, I could have a shred of understanding for not having had the opportunity to pay attention in 3rd grade social studies.
Fucking red hat wearing so called constitutionalists who literally don't know what it fucking says.
Nice wall of self-righteous pseudo-intellectual bullshit you have there. Maybe try being constructive next time instead of letting a stranger on the internet rustle your jimmies.
They are 100% correct mate, everything they wrote is right. Just because you lack the capacity to understand something, doesn't make it bullshit...
They're right, they're also an asshole with a superiority complex.
Never said they were wrong about the application of the first amendment, because they're not. They just absolutely ruined what could have been a teaching comment by being a condescending asshole.
Lol, are you actually getting downvoted for all this?
Everything this person wrote is correct. Free Speech protects you from the government, not other individuals.
They're getting down voted for the paragraphs at the end angrily accusing someone who misunderstood something of supporting the Republican party
Free speech isn't explicitly a legal definition, let's not talk past each other by using different definitions for the same word.
The notion is explicitly a legal definition in America.
It's right there. The government cannot fuck with you for talking shit, but anyone else can.
Prime American defaultism
Which, seeing as cybertrucks aren't allowed to be sold in europe, means we are effectively talking about america here, ain't we? Oh, AND the comment that kicked all this off (by aramova) was definitely talking about american law, so we know that at least four comments above yours the topic's relevance had already been narrowed. We can probably make the conclusion that the very top comment was referring to american law too, since they are presumably intelligent enough to know that the article was talking about a rapper from america, AND very few other places have citizens that use the phrase freedom of speech because their laws are different (and americans get all 'religious-frenzied' about their bill of rights).
It's less "american defaultism" than "we're talking about america right now, dipstick."